Increpare: Indie Developer Needs Cash, Badly

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You know Increpare? Aka Stephen Lavelle? He’s one of the hyper-prolific game creators on the British indie scene. We’ve blogged about a couple of his games before (The historian game Opera Omnia and the Mass Effect 2 parody Starfeld), but he does a whole lot more. His presentation at World of Love basically involved him just talking to everyone in the audience about what they were up to. He also basically worked in the industry as a coder in the games industry and doing it solely as a job – because he saved his creativity for churning out games. Anyway – the reason why I’m posting is that he’s just been made redundant and has put up a request for donations. If you’ve ever dug any of his games, now would be a good time to throw some Internetcoins in his direction. And if you haven’t, go to Increpare‘s site and be bewildered at where to start. I’ve just played Whale of Noise, based around one of our aquatic mammal sorts learning notes to sing to separate its body into increasingly distantly placed parts. And The Terrible Whiteness of Appalachian Nights features stuff so horrible I can’t even show you a screenshot. And the pictured Beatification is just plain odd. What have you found?

I don’t think so. Opera Omnia is probably his “biggest” work but there’s something to find in pretty much all he does.

Cat Got Lost is probably the most straightforward but I dunno, I like them all. Watching folks play Happening Game at the EG Expo last year was definitely one of those moments I’ll remember for quite a while.

His request seems a bit frivolous, considering he could get another job in the industry and then try to see how much of a market there is for his games. Best of luck to him though. If Indie developers can create games they can live on in the long run, it is a good thing.

“His request seems a bit frivolous, considering he could get another job in the industry and then try to see how much of a market there is for his games.”

Speaking from personal experience, doing indie stuff with the spare time and passion left over from a mainstream game/software industry day job is really, really difficult. I am astonished and humbled at how prolific Lavelle was able to be with one.

Lavelle’s work is crazy diverse, hard to classify and wields inscrutability for artistic effect better than 99% of indie games today. He’s well worth supporting.

@castle Amen. One giant zip file containing all his games for some pay-whatever-you-want price (with a minimum payment to cover download costs) might find quite a few takers. And a limited edition USB stick.

Oh good another web based retro indie art developer, the non mainstream is really getting on my nerves. If I support this guy, does it mean that I get to experience more games like Covetous and the rest of those things? If so, I’ll pass.

It must be a full time job for you, going to all the articles on the internet about things you don’t like and letting everyone know. Have you got a donations page? I’d like to contribute to your project.

My first thought: get a job, like the rest of the world, Maybe if he made something enjoayable that would made me ask for more… btw I do give money to hopeless beggars and to street performers, but I’d skip artsy indie developers with an almighty ego – I find the guy neither hopeless, nor interesting ;( And now kill me for being such a troll/ass.

It’s pretty hard to get a job at the minute, and it will get harder. I dare say he’s trying all the options he can think of. I’d consider doing internet begging too, but I know no-one cares whether I exist or not (winky thing).

On his site he writes “It wouldn’t be that difficult to find a new full-time job as a software engineer. However, I am resisting the pull, and hoping dearly to find a way to spend more time making games. Making games is what I want to do.” so clearly this is not an issue here.

One shouldn’t read too much into this though. It is possible he is just looking for a part-time job to provide for himself which would give him more time to spend making games.

Before the baseless hatred of experimental indie developers gets too thick in here, I would like to state that I LOVE this sort of thing. I’d sooner play a hundred interesting experiments than any big studio release of the last few years.

I don’t think it’s the opinion that people object to most of the time, but how some people choose to express it. It can come across as quite unpleasant since these games tend to be labours of love created by one person, or a very small team.

“I’d sooner play a hundred interesting experiments than any big studio release of the last few years.”

So 1 big studio release = 100 experimental projects? Hmm. Harsh.

And never mind PLAY, would you PAY for 100 experimental projects?

I’ll be honest, I found Ra Ra Racer to be incredibly clever. But it’s a joke, it’s not a game.

What he’s doing is worthy of support, but before he claims he has no source of income (which presumably means his savings are large enough that he doesn’t qualify for benefits?) and please can you spare a dime, how about making his website more appealing, make it more of a magazine format – anyone making those games has something to say – set up one of those bespoke stores selling T shirts and coffee mugs – I am in for a Nazi BJ tee – and look for grants and advertising.

Or maybe Robert Yang will adopt and take care of him. Call that Plan B.

This guy needs to look around the various homebrew sites, as they are often looking for talented coders to hire for homebrew games. Just a week or so ago I happened to see someone on link to gp32x.com wanting to hire a talented programmer/s for a homebrew game. There are many many sites like this, he just needs to do the leg work. This would be ideal for him as it would mean he still gets to work on games, but not compromise himself.

Other options would be Craigslist http://www.craigslist.org People always make personal adds on there. Anything from acting work to programing. He has the qualifications and knowledge, so that’s really half the battle, he just need to be determined enough!

Can’t believe I’m helping this guy find work. I only work a minimum wage job myself!

He’s already mentioned he doesn’t believe he’ll have trouble finding a new job. And if you had ever actually done anything through craigslist or similar, you’d know most of the projects are along the lines of ‘we can’t pay you, but you can share in our non-existant profit!’/’think of the exposure!’
The ones that aren’t pay you pennies or worse: not at all.

Just a warning, the game called “sub/conscious” will start doing google searches for things like “underage girls naked” in your browser. Something you might want to avoid, especially considering google stores all your searches along with your IP.

Wait, I always thought that “indie” referred to a game that was made without the backing of large corporations, and sold to provide the creator with his primary source of income… Does it nowadays refer to anything that’s released (no matter if it’s for free or not) that’s not from some huge corporation???